Bring a lunch (or not), and join us for these enlightening presentations
Wednesdays from 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m.
The Women’s Center, 107 Hanna Hall

Spring 2012

DATE:  January 18, 2012
TITLE:  Big Fath Myths - The Truth About Exercise & Healthy Body Weight
PRESENTER:  Dr. Faith Yingling & Karyn Smith, Wellness Center
***In recognition of Healthy Weight Week***

Make it your resolution to feel great in 2012. Through proper exercise and dietary choices, you can stay healthy this New Year. Learn tips to improve your workout routine, no matter what your body size or fitness level.  The presenters will help you learn to reduce your stress levels, have more energy, and feel better about yourself.  

DATE:  January 25, 2012
TITLE:  Choose to be Informed:  Ohio Reproductive Health Rights
PRESENTER:  Jamie Miracle, Director of NARAL Pro-Choice Ohio
***In recognition of the Anniversary of Roe V Wade***

Title IX, the law making gender discrimination in education illegal, was passed in 1972. One consequence of this law was the how it dramatically changed the landscape of sport for girls and women. There has been a striking increase in the number of girls and women competing and social attitudes towards women in sport have become much more supportive. Yet, here we are 40 years later and we still face many challenges and misconceptions regarding Title IX. In this presentation, Drs. Krane and Parks will highlight the positive changes in women's sport as well as current barriers still faced by sporting girls and women. This presentation is in recognition of National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

DATE:  February 1, 2012
TITLE:  Title IX Forty Years Later
PRESENTER:  Dr. Vikki Krane, Human Movement, Sport, & Leisure Studies & Dr. Janet Parks, Distinguished Teaching Professor Emerita
***In recognition of National Girls and Women in Sports Day***

Title IX, the law making gender discrimination in education illegal, was passed in 1972. One consequence of this law was the how it dramatically changed the landscape of sport for girls and women. There has been a striking increase in the number of girls and women competing and social attitudes towards women in sport have become much more supportive. Yet, here we are 40 years later and we still face many challenges and misconceptions regarding Title IX. In this presentation, Drs. Krane and Parks will highlight the positive changes in women's sport as well as current barriers still faced by sporting girls and women. This presentation is in recognition of National Girls and Women in Sports Day.

DATE:  February 8, 2012
TITLE:  Know Your Role: Gendered Racial Performances on Campus
PRESENTER:  Presenter:  Dr. Dafina Stewart, Higher Education
***In recognition of Black History Month***

Social group membership brings with it a sense of community and homeplace that is often a source of comfort and security for individuals navigating the identity throes instigated by the college environment. Membership in these communities also bring shared and contested understandings of how members of the group should perform their identities as group members. This presentation will share some research findings related to the gendered nature of racial performances among a sample of Black college students and invite participants to consider issues of authenticity and identity development that are raised.

DATE:  February 15, 2012
TITLE:  (Not Necessarily) Forbidden Love: A Valentine to Lesbian Relationships
PRESENTER:  Julie Haught, English
***In recognition of Valentine’s Day***

Unlike the tortured lesbians, Martha Dobie, from Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour, and Stephen Gordon, from Radclyffe Hall’s The Well of Loneliness, literature, letters, and history also provide us with countless stories of positive lesbian relationships.  In literature, for instance, Alice Walker’s Pulitzer-Prize-winning, The Color Purple, celebrates Celie and Shug’s loving relationship. Or, consider the real-life story of activists Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon, two women who began living together on Valentine’s Day, 1953, and who, after 51 years, were issued a marriage license in San Francisco on February 12, 2004, (later voided by CA Supreme Court) and then married again in California, June 16, 2008, some 55 years into their relationship!  Today’s presentation will celebrate stories like Celie & Shug’s as well as Del and Phyllis’s -- a celebration of stories of women loving women without apology.

DATE:  February 22, 2012
TITLE:  A Dark Event in a Lighted Place: A Relational Experience of Anorexia                                              
PRESENTER:  Marne Austin, American Culture Studies
***In recognition of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week***

Today, it is not uncommon to hear of individuals’ stories of their battles with eating disorders. Whiles these stories are important and should not be diminished in any capacity, what we fail to often address is that eating disorders do not just affect the diagnosed and their friends and family in isolation; rather it is an ongoing event that is co-experienced. This story is not my story.  It is our story.  This is a story about my mom and I told through the context of my continuing battle with anorexic thinking.  While the topic through which this story is shared is that of an eating disorder, it is imperative to understand that the eating disorder is not the sole focus of the story—the relationship is.  This project uses co-narrative, autoethnography, and a relational communication theory of identity to gain an understanding of how a relational identity is constructed between mother and daughter through, despite, and around the ongoing event of my disordered eating.

DATE:  February 29, 2012
TITLE:  Black & Female: A Double Portion
PRESENTER:  Rose Russell, Feature Writer for The Toledo Blade
***In recognition of Black History Month and Women’s History Month***

Rose Russell, Blade Feature Writer, will discuss some of the advantages and disadvantages that she has had, the good and bad that she has experienced, and what she has found to be beneficial and not-so-pleasant after 38 years as a black female journalist.

DATE:  March 14, 2012
TITLE:  Saving Muslim Women or Sustaining Liberal Hegemonies?                                        
PRESENTER:  Dr. Tabassum Ruby, Women’s Studies
***In recognition of Women’s History Month***

In March 2004 a small group of Muslims made the announcement that, under the Ontario Arbitration Act, S.O. 1991, Canadian Muslims could resolve their family disputes through faith-based arbitration. This announcement quickly received international attention and many women’s rights organizations launched a global campaign to ban this kind of faith-based arbitration. A major focus of the campaign was the idea that Islamic laws do not embody gender equality; hence, Muslims must draw on liberal-secular laws when resolving family disputes to assure women’s rights. In this presentation I examine the manner in which the faith-based arbitration debates constitute Muslim women as “vulnerable,” needing to be protected under “civilized” laws. I argue that the normalization and the universalization of liberal-secular normative values feed into the racialization of Islam and Muslim communities, and the idea of gender equality becomes a mechanism through which colonial and imperial rules are installed. I also discuss contestations and tensions that are embedded in the debates about Ontario shari‘ah tribunals in consolidating a liberal order that the feminist critics themselves support through rendering Muslim women as “victims” of patriarchal religion and culture.

DATE:  March 21, 2012
TITLE:  New Modes of Student Activism
FACILITATOR: Tobias Spears, LGBT Resource Center
***In recognition of Women’s History Month***

The audience will be introduced to several self identifying student activists who are organizing around traditional and non-traditional modes of feminist activism. From leading student clubs that empower LGBT people of color, to using the blogosphere to promote women’s equality, come participate in a conversation with BGSU student leaders. The panel members will explore their motivations to create change while also engaging in dialogue about what they see as shifts in activist mediums.  

DATE:  March 28, 2012
TITLE:  Bring Your Favorite Professor or Mentor to Lunch Day
***In recognition of Women’s History Month***

A time you can bring your favorite professor or mentor to lunch.  

DATE:  April 4, 2012
TITLE:  Prosecuting Rape as a Weapon of War: From Bosnia to Libya
PRESENTER:  Dr. Renee Heberle, University of Toledo Political Science
***In recognition of Rape & Sexual Assault Awareness Month***

Dr. Heberle will present on the history and current status of incorporating sex and gender crimes into international human rights regimes. Her research addresses the historical exclusion of women from international law regarding human rights and the struggles of political and legal advocates to recognize when harms inflicted against non-combatants in war zones are "weapons of war" rather than as "collateral damage."

Special attention will be paid to the creation of the International Criminal Court in light of resistance from conservative and patriarchal forces determined not to allow gendered and sexualized harms status in international law. The struggle to include "gender crimes" in the jurisdiction of the Court as it was created by the Rome Statue of 1998 will be highlighted

DATE:  April 11, 2012
TITLE:  Sharing the Journey: The Path to Self Publication
PRESENTER:  Jean Ann Geist, author

This presentation chronicles many of the challenges and the joys Jean Ann Geist encountered while transforming her book from a raw manuscript to a professionally edited and designed trade paperback.  Geist’s novel of romantic intrigue, Only in the Movies, features older protagonists grappling with the conflicts of a cross-cultural liaison amidst the flat lands of Northwest Ohio.

DATE:  April 18, 2012
TITLE:  Women Helping Women Around the World
PRESENTER:  MACIE Returned Peace Corps Volunteer Fellows
***In recognition of Volunteer Week***

For over fifty years, Peace Corps Volunteers have served their country in the cause of world peace by living and working in developing countries. Peace Corps Volunteers have served in 139 host countries addressing issues ranging from HIV/AIDS education to information technology and environmental preservation. A panel of returned female Peace Corps Volunteers who served in Africa, Latin America, and Central Asia will share their experiences of service. Hear their stories on how they made a difference in the lives of women around the world and how the world made a difference in them.

DATE:  April 25, 2012
TITLE:  "Women Aren't Funny?": Understanding Gender & Comedy
PRESENTER:  Melinda Lewis, Katie Barak, & Wonda Baugh, American Cultural Studies
***In celebration of National Humor Month***

Although there are a number of examples proving the notion incorrect, it is still widely insinuated that women are not funny.  While they can be funny in specific situations and serve various roles in executing a joke or gag, on the whole, women are funny by proximity rather than the agents of humor.  This panel seeks to explore a few case studies of funny women and draw out a few hypotheses as to why this misconception continues to exist despite evidence otherwise.

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